From the Desk of Father Nathan

A Message from Father Nathan

My dearest people closest to my heart!

God bless you and your generous heart.

St. Jerome, priest and doctor of the Church – Sept 30

St Therese of the Child of Jesus – Oct 1

Holy Guardian Angels – Oct 2

St. Francis of Assisi – Oct 4

Feasts and Memorials This week

This week we have lots of wonderful saints’ feasts and memorials to celebrate. Even though all of them are great, God and the Church have the reasons why they are saints of God.

We have St. Jerome, priest and doctor of the Church, St Therese of the Child of Christ, Holy Guardian Angels, and St. Francis of Assisi.

St Therese of the Child of Christ

I wanted to write a few things about St. Therese of the Child of Jesus, virgin, and doctor of the Church. I have a great love and fascination for her. She is one of the saints I adore. I believe she is the best model and person of our time today. Therese Francoise Marie Martin Alencon was born on January 2, 1873, to a couple of jewelers and watchmakers. They were deeply devoted believers, “Worthy more of heaven than of Earth,” as Therese said of them. She was the last of eight children, three of whom died in childhood. Orphaned from her mother at the age of four, she relived the drama of abandonment as each of her four sisters entered Carmelite life, though in return she received the particular affection of the father who called her “Little Queen of France and Navarre.”

1873–1897

Patron Saint of foreign missions and missionaries, AIDS patients, air crews, florists, flower growers, and sick people
Invoked against illness, tuberculosis, and loss of parents
Canonized by Pope Pius XI on May 17, 1925
Liturgical Color: White

She entered the Carmel of Lisieux at the age of 15 by special permission of Pope Leo XII, whom Therese herself had begged in Rome. “If God wills, you will enter,” was the Pope’s response. The girl’s desire was to “save souls” and above all “to pray in aid of priests.”

Sister Theresa of the Child of Jesus and of the Holy Face is name she took at her profession. Therese elaborated a highly original and powerful spirituality, called the “theology of the little way” or “spiritual children” which bases the practice of love for God not on great actions, but everyday – seemingly insignificant – acts. In her autobiography, Therese writes,

“There is only one thing to do: throw the flowers of small sacrifices to Jesus.”

And elsewhere,

“I want to teach the little methods that have worked for me.”

In this original draft, this diary carries the subtitle, “The Story of the Springtime of a Little White Flower.” Beneath the whimsical appearance, however, there is actually a hard journey toward holiness marked by a strong response to God’s love for man.

Not understood by the sisters of Carmel, Theresa says she received “ more thorns than roses” but accepted with patience the injustices and persecutions as well as the pain and fatigue of illness, offering everything “for the needs of the Church”, in order, “to cast roses on all, the just and sinners.

For John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the specificity of her spirituality is its total openness to the invasion of God’s love, the capacity it engenders to respond to that love, even in the “night” of the spirit- for which Therese was a sister in this to sinners, the fallen way, atheists, the desperate – and for this, she was declared the patron saint of missionaries. The heart of Therese’s spirituality resides in the awareness that man, even in his smallest ends up divinized by Grace.

With lots of love and blessings.

Ever wanting to be faithful to your service,

— Fr. Sahayanathan Nathan